Unlike most food truck entrepreneurs, owner Tony Fellows has been in the ice cream business most of his life.

“‘I’ve always loved ice cream,” says Fellows, 44. “We’re from Hollywood and we always had family barbecues on Sunday nights and we always bought ice cream. Ice cream was a focal point.”

When he was 15, he started scooping at the Baskin-Robbins on Sheridan Street. In the mid 1980s, he helped open a short-lived store called Quintuples Ice Cream and Frozen Yogurt. For several years, he worked with Edy's Ice Cream expanding the brand from outside of traditional supermarkets to shopping malls across the country.

After living in Michigan and Texas, Fellows returned to South Florida in 2009, got out of the ice cream business, but discovered food trucks.

“I really enjoyed the fact that when I went out to one of these food truck events, my friends and neighbors were there. It was kind of grass roots.”

Fellows tossed around opening a frozen yogurt spot, but wanted to create something unique. He also wanted to invest his money in quality ingredients instead of a high rent spot in a shopping mall. His gelato is made with skim milk and there are pieces of fruit and chunks of chocolate in his pops.

HipPOPs truck will have 17 different flavors of 4-ounce gelato, sorbet or yogurt pops. One-ounce pops are available for special order.

Gelato flavors include Belgian chocolate, Mexican chocolate chipotle, coconut and pistachio. There's also blood orange and lemon sorbet with fresh mint and lemon zest and original tart or strawberry yogurt. Prices range from $3 to $5, depending on dip flavors (dark, milk or white chocolate) and any of six toppings, which Fellows calls poppings. They include crushed pistachios, shredded coconut and crushed pretzels.

“I'm very excited because of the interactivity that they bring to the South Florida food truck scene,” says Sef Gonzalez, who organizes food truck events at MiamiFoodTrucks.com and invited Fellows to Saturday’s festival. “Everyone loves to create and here you'll have the chance to be the mad scientist and create a pop that is solely based on your choices.”

Gonzalez was also impressed with Fellows’ Dania Beach microcreamery.

“It’s really a handcrafted product,” says Fellows. “It’s not mass produced ice cream that’s sitting in some substation in Ocala waiting to be transferred to a distribution point.”

Fellows says HipPOPs is also a family business with wife Niva handling social media and their children, ages five through 12, approving new flavors.

“It makes me very very happy when I bring these bars to my family and friends and to the public and they bite into a piece of high quality Belgium chocolate and say that’s phenomenal,” says Fellows. “That’s where my joy comes from.”

PHOTO: Fellows in his Dania Beach microcreamery where he makes his HipPOPs.

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About the author

The average American buys food from a restaurant almost six times a week. That’s a whopping 48 percent of our food budget, according to The National Restaurant Association. < More >

JOHN TANASYCHUK, a features writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, has written about food and dining for most of his journalism career.< More >